


solace

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen, Real Madrid CF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4991005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living well is the best revenge. Or, Iker finds his way to equilibrium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	solace

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is, apart from the fact that I've been emotionally divorced from Real Madrid since Iker went to Porto and tonight just sat down and wrote most of this in like 4 hours. The first time that I've managed to write something about Real that wasn't just...bitterness, incidentally. 
> 
> wrote it in one go with little fact checking so- timeline's a bit skewed, mistakes all mine.

 

 

 

Iker switches on the television and lasts three minutes before switching it off. Outside it's raining again, inside his chest is unstitching itself in small increments. The rain drums down from the roof and slips, cold, in to the gutters. Iker closes his eyes.

 

 

-

 

 

Porto is nothing like Real Madrid. He's familiar with the training ground already, familiar in the way that the surroundings lose their odd shine and become dull regularities. The mountains on the horizon no longer look strange to him from his spot between the posts on the training field, their blue shapes tenderly sketched in to the skyline. The sea's not far, though he couldn't see it. He can feel a map of it in his head, the way he knows that if he kept driving for around half an hour- forty minutes if traffic- he'll get to the beach.

The corridors with their cream paint, the way the light goes through the smudged glass windows in the evening after training's ended, the sound of his own footsteps on the polished floor in PortoGaia. The familiarity of ritual, made strange because it's been barely two weeks.

But two weeks is a long time in football.

 

-

 

He's reading a book to Martin. Mostly he points at the shapes on the hard cardboard pages and tries to stop Martin from chewing on them.

“He's too young.” Sara says from the doorway, amused.

Iker gives her a mockingly exasperated look.

“Ball.” He says, stabs the page with a finger. Martin touches it curiously.

“Say it, Martin.”

His son doesn't say anything. Iker raises his eyebrows, trying for sternness. Martin smiles and Iker feels himself crack. Sara laughs at them both and says, “Bedtime.”

“I'll stay with him.” Iker says, tucking the covers around them both. “You go watch tv or something.”

“You sure?” Sara says. “He takes forever to fall asleep.”

“Sure.” Iker says, “Go. Relax.”

He doesn't know how hard it was for her to give up her job for their family. It was just that- he doesn't know. It must be hard. He settles down and kisses Martin on the top of his head, pitches his voice low and tells him stories till they both fall asleep.

 

-

 

Iker has this dream sometimes.

 

- _M_ _adrid sighing in his ear, Iker, come back._

_He says, I’m already there. And he was, and the lights turn on, and the confetti rains down, and when they touch his skin they turn from white to gold-_

_-_

  


There was another dream, but this one had come true, sometime ago. He had been very young.

 

 

Iker looks at the still life set up before him, thinking of geometry. A ball, a dodecahedron, a cylinder, displayed on the teacher's deck on some shiny brocade fabric. He's sketching it, not very well, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, faint new grooves between his eyebrows. It's laborious, boring work, the underside of his hand slowly getting darkened by graphite as he moves his pencil back and forth, absently. Long strokes with the flat of the nib.

They call him twice before he lifts his head, blinking. “Iker.”

“Yes?” There's not many reasons the principal himself would come to get him. His heart blooms like a water balloon Unai would throw at window panes where they burst, leaving drooping plastic skins on the glass. Iker wonders if this was the way he was going to go. Implosion. He won’t be able to keep it in if it’s what he wanted to hear.

He goes out in to the corridor and the principal couldn't wait till they got to his office. Iker's hand sweaty against a locker as he braces himself.

 “Real Madrid is calling you up for the first team.”

And so everything changes, like reality's been giving a second filter, this time brighter and more vivid and noisier. Even the long school corridors, even the grey lockers, the dim flickering florescent lights, even the basins, even the bathroom doors with scratched in initials on the back. It was wonderful. He hears something awfully like music.

“Iker? Are you ok?”

He realizes he hasn't said anything yet. Iker nods, looking away. They let him out early. When he gets past the gates he starts to whistle, and when he gets to the road he's running and laughing, swinging his bag up at the sky, that blue sky under which he was finally, finally-

 

 

-

 Porto plays their first champions league game in mid September. They concede early and Iker is unreasonably angry at himself for it, because he always is, whatever the circumstances. He yells at his defenders instead. They give him wry looks and he catches Maxi shrugging at Bruno, feels something a little like fondness underneath the exasperation.

He pulls off a great save. The crowd goes insane. He feels the pulse of their hearts in his, breathing harshly through the sharp pain in his elbow where he lands wrong.

In that moment of fierce victory he suddenly thinks of the tabloid titles tomorrow because he already knows what they will be, and it feels a little like a dull blade underneath his lungs. _Madrid surely regrets selling Casillas after performance against Dynamo Kiev._

 

_-_

 He drives out to the beach sometimes to watch the flat sea and the gulls swooping overhead. Living by the sea was a novelty, at least. There's a secluded stretch with few people and some benches.

He phones Sergio when the peaceful scene gets under his skin and claws at his nerves.

“It’s not the same without you.” Sergio says, sighing when he picked up the phone after two rings.  
Iker smiles, sprawls easier on the bench. “It’s not? Is Real Madrid falling apart without me?”

“You know what I mean.” Sergio says, reproachful but chuckling.

“Yes.” Iker laughs, giving up on teasing him.

They talk about what had happened that week, Sergio making a conscious effort to skirt around Real, even though that left a limited amount of things he could talk about. Iker suffers fondly through the latest flamenco hits, Pilar's bitchy co-worker, and Sergio junior's antics in pre-school before steering the conversation to Real. Sergio's relief was palpable through the phone.

“It’ll be strange.” Iker says finally, squinting out at the horizon. It's a long shimmery line smudged in the far distance.

“What?”

“If we play against each other in the Champion's League. Either way, I’ll be winning.” Iker says. Sergio laughs, gently.

“Only you.” He says.

Iker shrugs lazily, even though Sergio couldn’t see him. “Don’t you think the same?”

“Sure, sure. If that’s how you comfort yourself when we beat Porto.”

“So cocky already.” Iker says, grinning up at the sky. “It’s too early to be so arrogant, Sergio. I can tell you we’re in very good shape.”

“But we are Real Madrid.” Sergio says simply, automatically. There’s a pause after his words, as though he wanted to take them back. Iker waits, ears ringing, for a beat more.

“Yes.” He says, “You are.”

 

-

Iker switches on the television. Real Madrid is playing. He lasts almost ten minutes this time.

 

-

 

Iker feels more tired than angry. More helpless than tired. More frustrated than helpless. More angry than frustrated, and so it goes on like a circle without end. There's a particularity to living beyond the myth of your own legend, and it's the penance that every one of them had to pay in the end. So it's his turn. Porto was a great club- he feels that, in his heart. Porto was a great club. It wasn't Real Madrid.

He misses Real Madrid like he missed something that didn't even exist anymore. It felt like a loss, incomprehensible. Real Madrid was still right there, not even five hundred miles away.

It was foolish to think he could box that away, even if goalkeepers specialized in mental compartmentalization. Once he steps in front of that net he was Casillas of Porto FC, and when he stepped off the field-

When he stepped off the field was where the trouble began. Foolish to think that a silent room and flashing lights, an empty table and a single microphone could take away those memories. As if the subdued cheering of a few hundred in the echoing stadium could replace the Bernabeu he still sees when he closes his eyes. As if the ending of the story had any bearing on the beginning, or the middle, or what the story itself meant.

_Iker._ He closes his eyes. Cibeles’ blank stone grey eyes, that madonna smile. He feels cool marble under his lips. The night sky had a thousand thousand stars and they- the ones in white, the ones with a crown on their chest, the kings of Europe- they were the ones who'd lit them all.

 

-

One day Martin will be less interested in shoving books in to his mouth and more interested in the stories on the page and Iker wonders if he could tell him one. Once there were men who did wonderful things for the love of it. Once there were men who were gods on Earth. Once there were men who wrote their heart's labor in to history. Once he had been one of them.

 

-

David calls him soon after he moved in to the new house in Porto. The living room smelled like fresh paint because they were overhauling a section of it, but everything was mostly out of boxes.

“I couldn’t watch United play for two whole years, you know.” David says, gentle.

Iker thinks he might have known that once. Maybe David had told him, before.

“It’ll be alright, Iker.” David continues. “You’ll go back one day. Home is home.” He says it with the confidence of a man who thinks he knows exactly what Iker’s going through.

 

“Iker, don’t be afraid of growing old.” He says, at last.

Iker considers. “I’m already old.”

There’s only silence, then, and when Iker hangs up, feeling every inch of his skin from ankles to the back of his ears, there’s still that odd space in between his hands. He laces his fingers together on his lap. A cat’s cradle. An emptiness between the lines; not in his hands, but in his chest.

  _I am sorry._ He texts David later. He’d only been trying to help, even though the answers he offered are exactly the same as those Iker already had. It wasn’t his fault that they were never the same kind of person, that they ran from different things. Iker missed him, missed David Beckham, not yet 30, shaven headed with an incomprehensible accent and hands that’d always threatened to pinch Iker’s sides during training.

_It’s alright._ David texts back. Iker smiles at his phone, trying to put a finger on the feeling. It’s a bit like dark chocolate, the expensive shit with a swiss name David always had around him and broke into perfectly symmetrical pieces before handing some to him. Iker never liked it, that acrid sour aftertaste it left on his tongue, that brief promise of sweetness when he bit down, that bitterness which lingers long after he swallows.

  


-

Iker switches the channel on the television, idly flicking past reality shows, soap operas, documentaries. Real Madrid is playing. He skips to a dubbed American movie.

 

-

Porto has been undefeated since the beginning of season. Iker feels the satisfaction soak in to his bones. Chelsea in particular was an experience, especially Mourinho's face when they shook hands after the match.

He'd had to pass Mou's statue every day during training. Iker remembers the first time he saw it, that eery likeness carved in rough stone. So his life was a circle too.

“You win.” He tells the statue, resisting the urge to crush the empty can of soda he held and bounce it off the stone.

Mourinho's statue had said nothing. Iker drops the can in a bin and doesn't spare it a second glance from that day on.

 

-

He calls Raul one weekend, remembering too late that it was early in New York.

“They won’t forget about you.” Raul says, bland.

Iker doesn’t know what it is about Raul that made him want to sit up straighter and square his shoulders, even though Raul’s miles and miles away and across an ocean.

“I’m not afraid of that.” Iker tells him. It was hard to describe. “I don’t know what’s wrong, really.” He’s picking at the threads coming loose on the sofa cushion. The patterns looked like ornate flowers, unravelling as he tugged gently on a strand.

What was he afraid of? That he would forget _them_ , maybe. That nothing will ever feel real again. As though every action after would be only photocopies of the ones before, each one paler and paler until they become barely recognizable, until he’s just going along with the motions, engulfed by the past.

“You’ll go back one day.” Raul says. It’s as close as he gets to comforting. Iker can imagine him right there, a warm hand between his shoulder blades, his head bent near.

He exhales into the phone. “I know. But how long till then?”

Raul laughs, surprisingly. “Have some patience. We’ll all get there in the end.”

“Why aren’t you?” Iker asks instead. “Why aren’t you back home yet?”

Raul’s quiet for a moment. “Guti is.” He points out.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s not the right time.” Raul says at last. And then, “Life is long, Iker.”

“You don’t get to pull that on me anymore, Raul.” Iker says, laughing. “I’m thirty-four.”

“Call me when you’re forty.” Raul says, cheerful, and hangs up on him.

He missed Raul too. The newness of the armband when Raul set it in place on his arm, the nerves twisting his stomach; most of all Raul’s stalwart belief in all of it, the Bernabeu and the people in white and their unfaltering faith. Their unfaltering faith. Here is the narrative of the people, if you will: There once was a man named Iker Casillas, and he was the best goalkeeper in the world.

  
Iker thinks, _It’s been so long._

  


-

He missed Real Madrid like he missed something that was not there anymore. Iker gets it one early morning in training, waiting for the others to arrive while he warmed up on the field. He missed it like he missed possessions he'd lost in a fire.

So trying to leave all of Real behind wasn't like pulling out a splinter from his finger after all. It’s like pulling at a splinter and finding out it’s a bone, or a tendon, some part of his very flesh. He couldn’t do it.

The saint Iker Casillas sinks to his knees on the grassy pitch, sits back on his heels. His breath hangs for a moment in front of his face, white frozen cloud of it, before dissipating.

  
  


-

Iker has this dream, sometimes, although he was certain that it had probably happened. He'd been very young.

 

_Hey, Iker! Come on. Do it!_

The mud underneath his boots, squelching as he lifted a foot and pressed it back down. Rainwater pooled in the hollow he left, grass stuck to the edges of his laces. Roberto's laughing, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes fanned out like the naked branches stretching to the skies. It's almost spring.

  


_I'll get soaked_. Iker says.

  


_Then I'll go first_. Roberto says, and does. He makes a giant splash, Iker shrieking and ducking out of the way, the water making dirt marks on his exposed shins.

  


_Your turn._

  


Iker shrugs, the pitch was ridiculous, the conditions are ridiculous, he has nothing to lose. So he yells before throwing himself flat out over the ground, like he was making a death defying all out save, glimpsing his own shadow under him wavering over the muddy water briefly before it shatters into a fractal. He's laughing when Roberto leans over him, blocking out the weak sunshine.

  


_How was that?_

  
Iker rolls over and sits up on his elbows. _Cold_ , he says, and grins, all straight teeth and arrogant happiness.  
  


-

He makes another great save in the next match. The crowd goes insane. There is a storyline somewhere here, but he doesn't think of it.

_There is a man named Iker Casillas, and he was once the best goalkeeper in the world-_

The crowd’s chanting his name as he raises both fists, clenched tight in the sweaty confines of his gloves. They're winning now, surely, still unbeaten 2 months in to the season.

There is a man named Iker Casillas, and he is still-

  
“San Iker!” Danilo screams in his ear, and Iker’s grinning, grinning so hard his face feels like it’s about to split and his heart's about to burst.

 

-

He settles down in front of the television. Real Madrid is playing.

“Martin.” Martin looks at him, smiling. He smiled a lot for a toddler. Iker feels his own mouth tug up at the edges. Iker nudges him gently. “Look.”

The players are walking on to the pitch. Iker holds on to his son tighter.

“Look, Martin.” 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


End file.
